Strange Angel
by sylphides
Summary: 3 chapters, 3 different takes on the secret and strange angels that haunt the memories of those they left behind. Let the music possess you.
1. Strange Angel

**Disclaimer: I do not own either Phantom of the Opera or Harry Potter. **

**Warnings: Slightly dark, underage (but nothing explicit)**

**Notices: This is not quite a cross-over, but certainly based on the story of **_**Phantom of the Opera **_**as well as inspired by some of the songs, (although again, not **_**quite **_**a song-fic though close—you'll note snippets of lyrics that most fit with the general mood/message of the chapter). **

**This piece is completed in three chapters.**

**I recommend, if you have it, listen to the soundtrack to Phantom of the Opera while you read this.**

"_Angel of Music, guide and guardian_

_Grant to me your glory!_

_Angel of Music, hide no longer_

_Secret and strange angel…"_

I was, perhaps, the first one to notice their curious connection.

I know what you're thinking. _Draco Malfoy, observant? Merlin will sprout orange hair and play for the Chudley Cannons first! _Well, granted. I am not particularly observant, not the way Slytherins are meant to be. I never claimed to be either. Noticing things was always…Snape's…forte. Besides, you didn't really think that all of us Slytherins were sneaky snakes? We encourage that kind of thinking because it keeps others distanced from us. Better than being swarmed by idiots and imbeciles. Most intelligent folk—usually the Ravenclaws first—realize this by the time they hit seventh year. I suppose I shouldn't have expected that much out of you though, Potter.

Fine, fine, back to the story. My confession, as it were.

I was the first to notice their strange, unlikely, unearthly connection.

It wasn't anything so obvious. It started in her third year at Hogwarts. She seemed breathless and tired all the time, and grumpier because of it. Snappier. I didn't notice anything much past that, except for when she took a bit of teasing badly and the next thing I knew, I had to rely on Crabbe to heal my unfortunate bruising from her right hook.

Now, the Granger _I _know is above all, hard to provoke because she is entirely too logical and factual. If the facts are wrong, she corrects you with that cool, snooty voice of hers before flouncing away. She does not deign to squabbling like…well, like you and Weasley, Potter. So when she did something so uncharacteristic, she become Something of Import on my radar, so to speak. She became a priority to investigate.

Did you know, she was exceptionally violent that year? Of course you don't. You were too busy thinking about your own problems as usual. What was it that year, a basilisk? No, no, that was second year, with your little red-headed piece of fluff being possessed by a diary. I swear, I had no idea my father would do such a thing. It's not exactly something you tell you twelve-year-old son—"Hey, Son, have a good year and school and oh, by the way, expect Ginny Weasley to be possessed by a book and letting out a giant snake that kills people with a look." Yeah, that'd go over well. I'd have thought my father was loony.

So, third year must have been when your godfather broke out of Azkaban and tried to kill you multiple times. Oh, and that nasty hippogriff tried to kill me. Yes, that was the year. She was extremely frazzled that year, but you didn't notice as usual—to worried about your own hide, I guess. You see, that was the year she realized that her parents didn't love her—or worse, that she doesn't love _them. _That's right. Your precious mu—er, Muggleborn friend hated her parents. Good, fine, upstanding people in their profession and their social circle, but they'd never had time to spend with her. Even less when her eleventh birthday proved beyond a fault just how _different _she was from them. Not that they ever said as much to her, and I didn't learn all of this until later, but…for all intents and purposes, she was a stranger in the family. They hadn't bothered to hang around to watch her grow up, and she in turn hadn't bothered to let them know what was going on in the world she lived in for the better part of each year. Emotional neglect, the Muggles call it. Honestly, Potter, just because I choose not to associate with dirt doesn't mean I haven't _learnt _about them. Know thy enemy and all that.

Fourth year, of course, was the Triwizard Tournament and I have to say, Potter, you did a fabulous job of helping Granger cover up any evidence of the other life she was already starting to lead. With your petty little worries about winning and Weasley's petty little jealous rages about _her_, no wonder she went to the Yule Ball with someone from an entirely different school. Viktor Krum provided something no one else could: support without strings attached. They had a purely contractual exchange—he got a girl who wouldn't fawn and pander to him because of his fame, and she got a date who wouldn't complain about every little problem and expect her to solve all of them. The perfect arrangement. And _still _the Weasel managed to ruin it for her…

Still, it was that year I first actually observed anything solid between them. They'd been too discreet before, but that year, I found out that he'd begun to tutor her.

_No, _I _don't _know exactly what. If I did, I'd most likely be as dead as Dumbledore—_ow! _My, Potter, I didn't know you had a thing for physical violence. How…common. _If _you will let me_ continue_ without these unpleasant _interruptions…_

Very well. _As _I was saying, that year I realized that Snape was tutoring your…_friend…_very discreetly indeed, although I have no doubt with the permission of Dumbledore. They met at irregular hours and days, and Snape was always too paranoid for me to do as much as eavesdrop a little at the door. Whatever happened during those 'lessons,' Potter, will remain a mystery to all but to people—them. They continued, oh yes they continued throughout fifth year and Umbridge's unfortunate installment at Hogwarts. Perhaps you noticed her rather ingenious plan in leading the Pink Toad to the Forbidden Forest and then to the centaurs? Did you know that the High Inquisitor was never heard off again? She knew exactly how unforgiving centaurs are, she'd read enough about them, and she planned it deliberately. She'd learnt her lessons well from my Head of House.

Sixth year was a pivotal year, in more than one way. It was, of course, the year I was tasked with the impossible task of killing the Headmaster. Not a good year for me, I'm afraid. It was, ironically enough, the year he too began to crack around the edges. He'd been lurking in the dungeons, cold and impersonal and ghostlike for longer than I can remember. My father used to warn me not to get on his bad side. Even crazy aunt Bellatrix was wary of him. That should tell you something if you had an ounce of brains in your oversized head, Potter. They were afraid of him.

But sixth year…I believe that he fell in love with her that year. That year, I caught the tiniest glimpses of an intensity between them. It was the oddest thing—just looking at them look at each other, it was like hearing this strange, sweet sound that wasn't audible to anyone but themselves. And me, of course, probably because I was paying closer attention than anyone else. _Years _passed between them in a single glance, Potter. It was…inexplicable. Now, I'd laugh myself silly if anyone ever referred to anything Snape-related as _sweet, _but it's true. Around her, it was like the sweetness of…molten lava, perhaps, the way it moves like poetry down the rock. It was a strange duet between soul mates, and once or twice they would catch each other's eyes and it was as if there was _music, _the purest, most frightening crash of pouring liquid notes I have ever heard, to this day.

And if you ever repeat _that, _Potter, so help me Merlin I _will _hunt you down and kill you, even if it puts me back in Azkaban again.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Of course, it wasn't easy as singing a song. She was getting more and more frightened by the minute by his startling possessiveness, I could tell. It was haunting her, and she couldn't get out and probably the worst thing was, she wasn't sure she _wanted _to get out. Shut _up, _Potter! I mean it! You have _no _idea, you with your high-and-mighty shining suit of armor, you've _never _had to make a choice that was ambiguous. You've _never _had to deal with walking a line between light and dark. You've _never _had people you love seeking to imprison you in a gilded cage that really is just as small and as soul-stealing as a plain one. A _prison. You, _Potter, had it easy. It was always Golden Boy Gryffindor for you, except for the brief stint where you were apparently the heir of Slytherin. And even _then, _it was just whispers and your friends stood by you. We had _no one. _No one who understood…

She…she knew that the Potions book belonged to him, by the way. That's why she tried to persuade you to leave it. She recognized the handwriting, the nickname, and she was deathly afraid of what he could do to you. That he would imprison you too in a cage of your own devising. But you played oh so well into his plans, Potter. He knew you better than you know yourself. It was the _Sectumsempra_ you cast at me in the bathroom that told him—and her—for sure just how much sway the Half-blood Prince had on you. It was then that he knew he would win.

The rest is, shall we say, history. You played right into his hands. I let the Death Eaters in, he killed Dumbledore—and then he went to her and asked her to come.

It still sticks in your throat and rankles in your stomach, doesn't it? That she, Hermione Granger, sidekick and brains of your pitiful little 'Trio' would, without hesitation, go to the man you'd just denounced a murderer and traitor of the worst kind. You can't avoid it, Potter. Yes, she went without even the briefest pause, and took his arm and they disappeared, and to this day they have not been seen, not even by the Dark Lord, not even by me…

You wanted the truth, Potter. The truth is that she _loved _him, loved him in a strange way that went against the rules of nature. She was scared of him, but in the end…well, fear, shall we say, turned to love. I don't know how, don't ask _me. _Do I _look _like I know all the answers? I'm just offering you my thoughts on the subject matter, and I think that she loved him with her entire soul, that it consumed her whole, that that which she feared became that which she desired. And in a twisted, warped way—he loved her too. She was his obsession. When she went to him that night, it was the point of no return for both of him. No matter what you do now, Potter, the _truth _is that they will have always won. _He _will have always won, because they love each other when none other would love them.

Why did he kill Dumbledore? It's simple, really. He'd taken the Unbreakable Vow with my mother, of course, but he had been willing to die…that is, until he fell in love and Granger loved him back. No man, be he phantom or flesh, will let anything stand between him and his beloved. He killed Dumbledore so that he could be with her, and she left _you _so that she could be with him. But that's just my best, smart, well-informed guess.

A love story, Potter. I thought Gryffindors enjoyed those sorts of stories, love covering a multitude of sins and all that. No one will ever know what exactly happened in those years that they learned each other and loved. I don't think anyone will ever find them. But wherever they are, those strange angels, I have no doubt that they will remain together until death finally separates them. And, just a little rival-to-rival secret, Potter—I think they're truly happy. Of course, we'll never know and I think it unlikely any of us shall ever find out the real truth, and the whole story, of what happened in those dungeons between Severus Snape and Hermione Granger.

I hope so, though. That they are happy. Away from the people, the masks, the fear—I'd like to think that they are somewhere out there together, creating their own music free from an audience.

But that's all speculation. I wouldn't know, and neither will _you_. But I do recall that you promised to get me out of this bloody prison in return for my full confession on the relationship between Granger and Snape. I expect to be removed from Azkaban within three days, Potter. I have more important business to attend to than hanging around a dank little cell and listening the snatches of songs that haunt me in the night, when I sleep.

"_Child of the wilderness_

_Born into emptiness_

_Learn to be lonely_

_Learn to find your way in the darkness…"_

**A.N.: Please, let me know what you think! **


	2. Wandering Child

**Disclaimer: Anything you recognize isn't mine.**

"_Wandering child, so lost, so helpless_

_Yearning for my guidance…"_

When I was a little girl, my favorite musical in the whole wide world was _Phantom of the Opera. _My parents took me to see it for my ninth birthday. I had told my current nanny that it was my very favorite book—Gaston Leroux was a _genius. _She remembered, and near my birthday, suggested tickets to see the musical to my parents, who took the suggestion with relief that they wouldn't have to slog through a bookshop or toy store to find me something appropriate. And so, on my ninth birthday, my nanny had made my childish fantasy true and I went to see _Phantom of the Opera_ and walked out dazed and breathless. Everything about it fascinated me: the costumes, the songs, the emotions, the almost-magical connection between the Phantom and Christine. _Especially _the odd, crackling energy between the Phantom and Christine.

_That's what love is, _my little-girl mind decided. Love must be the all-consuming passion the Phantom had for Christine. Nothing else would explain his conduct, murdering people, scaring Christine, threatening Raoul. My parents were slightly taken aback when, upon asking me what my opinion was, I delivered a long lecture on how Christine should have just explained how she felt to the Angel of Music and he should have told her he loved her before Raoul even showed up. I remember saying quite impressively, _"Raoul is a nice enough boy but they didn't _connect." My parents tried to convince me that the Phantom's type of love wasn't real love at all, but my little girl's heart was stubbornly convinced by then and nothing they could say would make me change my mind. They gave up after a few days, and routine resumed—distance, distance, distance. They were back to being the absent parents again.

Oh, but the music!

It swelled, it lifted hearts only to hurl them off the highest of cliffs, and it danced wildy on the edge of madness and sanity, the way the Phantom himself did. It mirrored him, and my young heart was lost the instant the first swirl of notes wreathed my head and reached into my ears. The music loved me and touched me intimately the way my parents never had, not for as long as I can remember. A string of nannies, years of coming home from school on the bus to an empty home and making my own snack, of wishing that I could be just like every other giggly girl and boy in my class with parents that would come into class as school ended and pick their children up and throw them into the air amidst squeals of laughter.

I was different.

I read, because it was an escape from my lonely existence. I had been an accident in the lives of two career-oriented people, but in books I could be the well-loved heroine of a nation perhaps, or Queen Elizabeth I who had been hated and reviled because of her mother before rising to become the sole ruler of England, powerful and adored by the people. Or a martyr who saved a country, like Joan of Arc, or…Christine, seduced by music and wooed by romance.

But on my ninth birthday, music taught me that even my imagination falls short in reality. And where books and imagination fall short, music steps in, for music is a bodiless soul swallowing those that listen, hoping to be reborn in a new body and recreated once more. That night, watching Christine desperately try to escape from the clutches of a man more phantom than real flesh, music took me and annihilated me and then reshaped me into a form of its own creation.

My eleventh birthday was small potatoes compared to that moment, that point of no return when I allowed the music to devour me entirely and take control. Yet it is an important date, if only for the introduction into a new world, where magic was _real _and not just the genius of many hands and faces on a lit-up stage. It was an introduction, and invitation, into the world where I met the man who would change my life the way the Phantom had irrevocably changed Christine's.

In my third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the Headmaster gave me a time-turner. To use for classes, he said, twinkling, blue eyes soft and sparkling with life. I don't know what he was thinking, to hand such responsibility to a young girl of thirteen. That time-turner was almost the death of me. Tired, frightened by the responsibility, already having long started to come apart from neglect, driven past all endurance, I finally broke apart at the seams far away from any prying eyes.

All but one.

He had been there, watching me struggle for the past months until it overwhelmed me finally, in that abandoned classroom in the unused wing of the dungeons. He saved me, told me that I did not have a choice—either I begin taking lessons in Occlumency from him or my breakdown would be the least of my worries. Occlumency—deceptively known as the art of keeping others out of your mind, but really so much more than that. Occlumency is the art of organizing the mind, of separating fantasy from reality, of recognizing dreams and truth, of knowing _yourself _far deeper than most dare to go.

It is difficult. That's what Harry never understood. It is difficult, and it is meant to be difficult. It isn't just a simple matter of blocking out everything. It is a matter of _knowing _it, _owning _it, and accepting it. I was finding unpleasant truths about myself every day that I spun the golden little hour-glass and faced another lesson. Truths that my lies and my fertile imagination had spun into fantasy and falsehood. Truths that I could barely face and acknowledge.

And every day, _his _impersonal mind would be in my head, whispering, seeking, brushing against the soft walls of my disorganized brain and uncovering yet another horrid truth. His voice, crooning the painful realities of myself that I had buried.

I had a lot of anger that year, pent up and mostly unspent. Anger at myself, anger at those around me who had supported me in my lies, anger at _him _for pointed them out with a ruthless hand.

Yet it continued. Fourth year was perhaps easier, with so much of the attention on Harry and the Tournament that any odd behavior or disappearances on my part were simply not noticed. I continued to learn myself, but by the end of the year _he _had begun to teach me about himself too—the art of Legilimency, to learn the other intimately. To _know _them, the way an Occlumens knows themselves. No secrets, no lies. Just dwelling inside the other's head, the way music had possessed me on my ninth birthday.

By the time the end of my fifth year had marked time passing, I knew Severus Snape as well as he knew me—nothing barred, nothing held back. And it frightened me.

They say the truth sets you free, but for me, the truth merely bound us together closer than shackles ever could. We _knew _each other, and it is only one step from _knowing _to _wanting. _Just as the Angel of Music had been controlled by the music, now he burned to possess the body that music had been reborn in: Christine. Just as he and Christine both knew the music, they knew each other.

I think that's why Christine chose Raoul. She didn't want to lose her soul to music. She didn't want to become someone else, changed by the music. She wanted to be the one in control, the one changing herself. She had something else outside there to hold on to, to give her a new identity that was separate from the music. But I, I didn't. I watched as the boys I called friends go back and forth, wrapped up in their problems and their own lives. I watched as Harry started to go down the same path as I, possessed not by music but by a very real ghost of the past, the Half-blood Prince. And I watched as the Half-blood Prince reached out his hand to me in the night, seconds after killing Albus Dumbledore.

I am no Christine. I could not save anyone that night. Not Dumbledore, whose blue eyes stilled so oddly into blankness, not Harry, who screamed like a wounded animal at the double betrayal. Not Ron, who stood next to Harry and asked me _why _with the same face as the eleven-year-old innocent I'd made friends with while fighting a troll_. _Not Ginny, who perhaps understood the best about the voice that belongs to _him, _murmuring inside of my head the way the diary of Tom Riddle did with her years ago. Not Malfoy, who had been watching me for years and let the Death Eaters in and still couldn't surrender control to the dark and kill. I couldn't save anyone…but I went.

I knew him, just as he knew me, and in that there is a certain freedom that is unlike any other. Christine chose the light and a life without song, but I, I chose the dark and the music continues on. It continues on, and the voice of my husband—not just in my head, but all around me—is there everyday to remind me of the music that has taken my soul. After all, music is rather like love—so like, that I can see no difference, and we dwell, Severus and I, in a realm of the music of the night everlasting.

"_But his voice filled my spirit with a strange, sweet sound_

_In that night, there was music in my mind_

_And through music my soul began to soar!_

_And I heard, as I'd never heard before…"_

**A.N.: Thoughts? Comments? Questions?**


	3. Yet the Soul Obeys

**Disclaimer: The usual**

**Notice: Please note—this chapter, the pronouns get a little messy and narrative switches from first person to third and back again multiple times without warning. This is intentional, because Severus is not completely **_**sane, **_**although he is sane enough. It's hard to explain, but I think it works. Please, just read and tell me what you think. I normally hate this kind of grammatical no-no, but it just felt right to me this time…**

"_Wildly my mind beats against you…_

_Yet the soul obeys!" _

She was bushy-haired, bucktoothed, and loudly demanding when I first met her. I didn't give her a second glance. A babe in swaddling, just like all the rest of the foolish children I taught. I had long given up finding the one, the one that made the ingredients sing beneath the preparing hand. She knew as much and as little as every other incompetent little student, and she was not worthy of my attention. None of them were.

There is an art, an innate _magic _to Potions-making that few grasp and fewer still can recreate. The simmering cauldrons, the subtle shades and delicate, creeping power…_beautiful, _I thought, the first time I watched a Potion being brewed. It didn't matter that the brewer was a blubbering fat slug of a teacher who wasn't even an actual _Master—_just a man who taught Potions. It didn't matter that he crushed the whiteroot too firmly and chopped the monkshood too roughly, or that the moonstone powder really ought to have been added at a consistent, sifting motion counterclockwise, not dumped in all at once. The young boy Severus Snape had been was riveted, and even Potter's uncouth behavior and Slughorn's inadequacy were mere annoyances, blips that barely registered.

His first potion was a boil-cure potion, and it was _perfect, _and ignored. He was, after all, not connected even remotely to anyone important. Nor was he charming, charismatic, or attractive. Severus had nothing at all to recommend him to Slughorn but a well-brewed boil-cure potion that, to the coarse eye of the imbecile, looked as well-done as Lily's (a fraction of a shade too pale—she had added not enough of the dried nettle), Black's (too syrupy, it would be less effective because he'd added the porcupine quills too quickly), and Avery's (it smelled just the tiniest bit sweet, which _wasn't _right at all. Severus suspected that Avery hadn't crushed the snake fangs well enough). But that wasn't right at all. While his classmates' potions were adequate and would work to an extent, none of them _sang _like Severus'. No other potion in that classroom was perfect, not like Severus'. But no one but Severus saw it, and heard the clear and beautiful siren's song of his potion. Slughorn had merely clapped him on the back jovially, told him he had an eye for potions, and that he hoped he was see more of Severus in years to come.

As the years went by, everything else continued to fall short of Severus' obsession with potions. It was hypnotic, as if the moment he was in front of a cauldron, he slipped into a strangely soothing dance as old as the moon and as young as his mind. Fingers moved with firm surety to music only Severus could hear. He had his share of failed potions, where notes went sour, flat or sharp without warning, or his body failed him and a hand pushed down too hard or added too liberally. Sometimes, like an intruder slamming a door in the middle of an orchestral symphony, it was sabotage. Severus was the most angry then, for no musician will tolerate their masterpiece, their _love, _being tampered with and spoiled.

When he became the professor, standing in front of the classroom to demonstrate the subtle science and exact art of potions-making, there was a wild _crescendo _to _forte. _His eyes roved from head to small head, watching like a hawk, and his ears strained to hear the music beneath another's fingertips. But there was only silence.

Sometimes, hope leapt into his throat when one student or another managed to produce a pure, golden note of joy, like a phoenix's song. Then the hope faded into bitterness when it became evident that it had been completely unintentional, a bit of _luck. _By the time _she _arrived, he had stopped looking, had closed his eyes and ears to all but the melody of his own cauldron.

And so, her first year passed by, and her second. But her third year—ah! _Pianissimo _thundered into a _fortissimo, _and the breathy, tense _steccato _matched the beat of her rapidly tapping heart when I finally found the source of the discordant chords that had begun to wreak havoc on my ears. It was music of a different sort, not under one's fingertips, creating potions, but rather—a child, blindly plunking on piano keys or singing when tone deaf. It was her mind itself, reaching out in distress, breaking through the natural barriers to echo its chaotic tangle of notes for anyone to wince at. And I could not stand the noise.

I offered—offered a chance for her to organize the music and keep it to herself, the way I had selfishly hugged the song of brewing close to my chest. She was teary-eyed, a mess, and she did not even know the simple melody of her own mind. _Know thyself, _I taught her. In order to hear the sound of your own true heartbeat, you must know it inside and out, note by note, rhythm and meter and key and octave. And that is the true power of the mind: to be the composer and not merely the conductor or singer, to hear and write down the score of your own mind.

Slow measure by slow measure, I taught and she learned the beauty of creating her own music solely for herself, within the four walls of her own mind. And time passed, as time does, and as the pages of the score increased, it was not just _her _music that we were transcribing, but mine as well, for somewhere along the way my own song had changed. The potions that had called to me every breath since I was eleven now subsided, their song done. Brewing became a task of listening to the faint echoes of the past and trying to replicate it as a tone-deaf man. Instead, a new harmony in minor was beginning to stir in _adagio_, the barest strains of introduction that sounded a clear, radiant, breathtaking peal every time I saw her.

And so, by the end of Hermione's fifth year, she was listening to what no one else had listened to since I first heard the ring of a glass phial and whisper of rising smoke.

By then, I could hear nothing but her. Potions fell silent and dumb to my questing hands, and it was as if I had lost a friend and replaced that friend with a soulmate. It was…overwhelming, the music that now flowed from her like rich, dark wine and honey. No longer the discordant crashes of her confused youth, she hummed with a vibrant tapestry of scintillating resonance, a wellspring of power.

Her song was _dolce _and _pianissimo, _and I longed to reach out with my yearning musician's hands and stroke it, urge it to a fierce climax, _accelerando, forte, _with feeling. I wanted to stay with her until _al fine, _the very end. And then I wanted to go to _da capo, _from the beginning, and start all over again. It consumed me, the fire of her soprano. I clutched at it like a dying man, and blocked out all other unwanted sounds.

In the end, it is what killed Albus Dumbledore, for his pathetic little whisper of a note did not even come close to the sweeping symphony of my love, and his blue eyes begged me to stay and finish his work, his final magnum opus, but Hermione's soul sang all the louder and sweeter. I ended his life like he had asked me to, but I could not stay and finish writing his score for him, for _her _song was the only one I heard, and it roared high and triumphant, melding in seamless harmony with my own mind as she took my hand and followed me into the night.

And the music plays on, and someone else finishes Albus' composition, and I, I continue to compose as I have since my fingers first touched a potion. Only this time, there is another pair ears to hear, another set of lips to sing, and another pair of hands to write the swelling, entrancing, soul-capturing music of the night.

"_Let the dream begin, _

_let your darker side give in_

_To the power of the music that I write_

_The power of the music of the night!"_

**A.N.: **_**Finite Incantatum, **_**though the spell of music remains. Please review.**

**Music terminology: **

**Crescendo – becoming louder**

**Forte – loudly **

**Pianissimo – very softly **

**Fortissimo – very loudly **

**Steccato – short and detached**

**Adagio - slowly**

**Dolce – sweetly **

**Accelerando – gradually increasing speed**

**Al fine – to the end**

**Da capo (D/C) – from the beginning**


End file.
